


The Forest Floor

by Argumedies



Category: Furry (Fandom), Zootopia (2016)
Genre: Gen, World of Zootopia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-04
Updated: 2016-12-04
Packaged: 2018-09-06 13:34:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8753662
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Argumedies/pseuds/Argumedies
Summary: When a young Doe, lost in the woods, finds herself along a path that in order to survive she must learn to take control in a world where savagery and instinct collide and the hierarchy between predator and prey fuse together in a bond beyond that not even the gods dare break.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This was an original Fur story. remastered for the world of Zootopia. I was going to try and keep this as "clean" but this was always an explicit story (or al least it will be by the end) and it wasn't the same without it and so I have changed its rating in accordance to what it will be when completed. 
> 
> Update 4\30\18
> 
> It still needs lots of work but I'm finally able to start on this project again and more chapters will be coming soon.

 

**The Forest Floor**

 

"Dammit mother, why did you do this to me?"

 

The evening air was crisp and quiet as Joe stared down the long path in front of her. It was a good hike from the bus station to her parent’s home. Not that a little hike mattered to her, she was incredibly physically fit, exercised and ran every day. She loved to run and probably could have ran all the way there, but with the approaching twilight, running at this time of night might cause more trouble then what its worth. Had the bus not broken down she surely would have been there long before now. Even then she had at least hoped to make it there before dark but it seamed that fate had placed its cruel paw on her once again. “Should have taken the train,” she thought.  
  
Normally she would be over joyed to come back to Glenmeadow but this time was different and she knew in her heart what really lie on the path before her. She stopped for a moment, closed her eyes and took in a deep breath letting the cool clean mountain air fill her lungs. Then she slowly let it out and stared into the cloudless sky above. “Good thing the moon was going to be full tonight,” she said to herself watching the golden globe arise between twin mountain peaks on the eastern horizon and Joe drank in its early radiant glow. The moon was big, bright and orange; a sign of the season. It meant that Autumn was here, in all its colorful glory.  
  
She pulled on her sweater, grabbed her backpack and started down the winding trail. As she made her way along the forest floor she allowed her mind and body wade in and soak it all up. She loved Autumn. In Zootopia, it always looked the same. Not that there wasn't color in Zootopia, the color was everywhere. Its just that... it never changed. Out here, change was everywhere. Autumn in the mountain forests was as bright and vibrant and full of life as if the trees themselves was a living city all their own. She wished she could stay here but sadly, this was not why she was here.  
  
For her, Autumn was also special in a very different kind of way. For some species it was just another time of the year. For Deer, it was an event that went back countless ages. But for her, it was a lifetime within an inescapable burden, an incubus of the night.  
  
Autumn was also the time of the “Festival” where clans from all across the herd communities gathered together in celebration of family, friends and... frivolity.  
  
“Celebration,” she thought remembering back a few years ago when she first was introduced to what the “real” Festival was about. When we were young, there really was a celebration where we all gathered together and we would eat, play games and be around family and friends. But it wasn't until the evening when the fawns were sent off to bed that the real festival began.  
  
In kind, an outside observer would see this event as the normal average every day festival activities. But In reality, it was all a set up. A lively event to put a smile on every one, to take advantage of them. For what the festival really amounted too, was socialized courtship.  
  
Joe had grown up tall and slender yet her chest had filled out with firm sculpted breasts that flowed down to a thin but tight abdomen then on to narrow muscular thighs and legs. And her fur had changed from a ragged brown spot of youth to a beautiful golden tan as an adult. An attractive Doe for sure and a magnet for every self absorbed, hoof dragger around.  
  
Joe stopped momentarily adjusting her bra off her hardening nipples. Unfortunately when it came the time of the festival, even she wasn't immune from the natural instincts born in her kind. All Doe's enter a heat cycle during the fall so biologically a Doe can only conceive during the time of the festival and over the years they managed to turn it into one big “mating” ritual.  
  
For those who did not possess the money or clout for a prearranged marriage, the festival was a mass ritual or right of passage where mothers and grand mothers paraded their daughter's around in longing hopes of wondrous matrimony while the bucks got drunk and stupid in hopes of getting laid.  
  
One time, Grand mother had tried to explain the event to her about the wild and crazy days of old but none of it ever really made sense to her and she would just nod in agreement or deliberately ignore the old doe when ever she rambled on about animal instincts and such. “Don't worry about it,” she would say. “When your moment comes, right or wrong won't matter. You either will, or will not; because love is a bond, not a barrier.”

For the first few years she had been able to resist the charms of suitors before. Big brutes, all brawn and no brains who carry their antlers between their legs. All they see is a fine piece of tail then its off to the next doe in line. Joe tried not to think about it but it was hard to fight the onset of the heat building within her. It had been growing stronger with each passing day and it and she was fully aware of going to the festival could bring.  
  
Normally she would have stayed in Zootopia for the duration and had it not been for mothers consistent ambitions to get her a boyfriend, this year would have been no different.  
  
But this time, mother had gone too far and had deliberately coerced Elliot Coos into writing letters to her at collage. Elliot was a nice young buck about her age whose father was in the transportation and migrations ministries. Which Joe was sure that this was more for mother's motives then any thing else and she felt bad that she had to come up here to bush him aside if for that alone. “Thanks, but no thanks.”  
  
The problem, she knew, wasn't that she wasn't interested, it was more that mother had done this to her and put her in this position. She had never been with a buck before and certainly she wasn't going to give in to one whose only in it for the rut. “If that's all Elliot wants , then he can just forget it.”  
  
And it wasn't that he wasn't a nice buck, she had known him since they were fawns in school. Nor was it that she wasn't interested in him or raising a family. She just always wanted to do it on her own, take her time and find the right one to be with; A typical Doe-eyed fantasy she knew.  
  
And it wasn't that she didn't know what sex was, many of her friends had shared their personal secretes with her and she wasn't about to start thinking on all the stuff they showed her on Zootopia's inter-web. “Animals,” she said with a shutter.  
  
But mother would often come back with “Don't wait too long, A good Buck may be hard to find but they wont be around forever.” All of which she knew was true but she couldn't help her own feelings. “No,” she thought, calming herself down a bit. All she wanted to do was to get away from the city for a while, be with family and just chalk it up to another year of apprehension.  
  
Joe continued on as the evening turned into night and a shiver began to creep up under her fur as the cool air had turned cold upon the sweat of the hike. She stopped for a moment to catch her breath and bearings, “I don't remember it being this far,” she thought. “I should have been there by now.”  
  
Joe looked around, the calm beautiful evening had been replaced by the eerie quiet of the night, and even though Joe could see quite well with the now bright white full moon light, she felt rather uncomfortable standing out in the open, alone, and exposed.  
  
Her belly rumbled; She hadn't eaten anything since she boarded the bus in Zootopia. She pulled off her back pack and rummaged through it for a granola bar thanking modern society for prepackaged food. It wasn't the greatest but it would have to do.  
  
She couldn't be lost, she thought as she munched on the chewy goodness. She spent half her life up here in these woods, studying and exploring many of the trails that lead off through the passes. But this one, this one didn't look like any of the ones she had been on before. “I know I couldn't have...” she started to say but paused when a soft rustling of leaves broke the quiet stillness of the forest around her.  
  
The fur on the back of her neck stood and sent an internal spark to her brain. Eyes and ears on full alert, she stood motionless they searched the darkened wood lines trying to locate its source.  
  
Then the gentile breeze touched her face and she let out a sigh of relief reassuring herself that she was alone. But acknowledging that, didn't seem to stop her tail from twitching. “I think I should turn around and head back to the bus stop.” and with that she gathered her back pack, turned and started to walk back the way she came when the breeze touched her again. Only this time it was different and it made her pause for a second time sniffing more. “Smoke?”  
  
She sniffed again, it was smoke. Not like that of a wild fire, she surmised, more like from a camp fire. “Where was it coming from?” she thought. Then, curiosity getting the better of her and she turned her nose in the direction it was strongest and followed it.  
  
She stepped off the main trail and cautiously and quietly she made her way through a denser part of the forest, down into a small ravine, past a shallow rivers pond that flowed from a waters fall. The smell of the smoke grew and she could barely make out the haze between the patches of moonlight through the trees. Closer and closer the the darkness crept in on her as the trees sapped the last of the heavenly light. Then through the darkness she saw the dim light, and then she heard a voice. As she made her way closer, the sound grew clearer as the low tones of a males voice flitted on the air and into Joe's ears and soon she found herself creeping in, hiding behind the trunk of a rather large tree.  
  
“Was he, singing?” she thought to her self. “No, he was... Chanting.”  
  
Joe took a breath and calmed her nerves then slowly peered around the tree at the voice. she gasped and quickly pulled herself behind the tree once again, "A wolf," she said to herself, heart racing in her throat remembering stories she had heard where Predators who still hunt Prey species even in these modern times. In school there was plenty of classes on the natural evolution history of predator and prey and while things between them were civilized in Zootopia, out here in the wild lands, it could still be a different story.  
  
He sat there cross pawed by his fire, eyes closed softly murmuring his chant. Emotionally, it was almost mesmerizing, but instinctively her mind was telling her to run. Joe quietly turned to do just that but the moment she took a step, the stick she put her hoof on cracked rather loud and she froze dead in her tracks.  
  
The chanting stopped.  
  
“Hello. Is anyone there?”  
  
Joe stood there not sure on what to do.  
  
“Please come, sit, I wont hurt you.”  
  
She squeezed her eyes tightly together her danger sense screaming at her but there was softness in his voice that quenched her building panic so politeness got the better of her. “I do not wish to bother you,” she said. “My apologies, I was merely out for a walk when I smelled the smoke from your fire and I thought I would check it out.”  
  
“It is okay, you are no bother.”  
  
Joe slowly gathered her composure, straightened herself up and walked out in the opening. She wasn't sure of what to expect but prudence kept her on alert. He had stood up to full height motionless next to his campfire. He was about six foot tall, a full head taller then she was. She placed his about the same age as herself, maybe a little older. Broad shouldered with a muscular frame under a heavy fur coat grown long for the coming winters snow. Then she saw the long object within his paw, a hunters spear, it's butt rested upon the ground. Her chest heaved, her heart pounded but she managed to hard swallow the fears that still lingered. “My name is Joe, Joe Ca'preo,” she said not taking her eyes off the spear.  
  
“My name is, Wa-kina, but my family calls me Storm.”  
  
She brushed aside a branch and walked into the fire's light.  
  
“Please, sit.” he said pointing to an old fallen log across from where he had been.  
  
Cautiously, she removed her back pack then settled next to the warm crackling fire. He was a light colored, white and gray wolf of which she was sure of, but within the light of the fire his fur had a taken on brilliant golden hue. Then averted she eyes in embarrassment at his manor of dress, or lack there of. She bit into her lip stifling the welling of the heat within. “Damn it,” she thought as her mind raced through endless theories of which most ending up in her own demise... or worse, something more barbaric... more, primal.  
  
He turned around, brought the spear in both paws, said a few soft spoken words, knelt and placed it upon a large old stump. The spear was nearly as long as she was tall, adorned with beads and feathers and it almost fit length-wise upon the large flat table sized stump.  
  
Storm bowed a nod and finished his words in a language she didn't quite understand.  
“I'm sorry, but may I ask what was it that you were chanting?” she asked changing the subject in her mind.  
  
“I wasn't chanting, I was praying.”  
  
Joe looked at him questionable.  
  
Storm smiled and turned his face to the forest. “My grandfather once told me that the spirits of the trees hold the most silent remembrance of our past for they live longer then any other creature in the forest.’ They pass along their visions upon the winds, catching them and tossing them back and forth in the webs of their limbs and leaves and bringing their stories down to us within our dreams.”  
  
Joe nodded silently but scoffed internally.  
  
He turned and knelt in front of the fire, “Are your hungry?” he asked.  
  
“No,” she politely lied noting the unsatisfied rumbling of her belly. “So...” she paused curiosity getting the better of her, “What are you praying to the spirits for?”  
  
“I pray for my love,” he said, his smile softening as if she had asked something that lashed at a memory.  
  
Joe recoiled inside “What happened?”  
  
“I do not know.”  
  
“She's missing?”  
  
“I trailed her and it has led me here.” he said. Then, he pulled a small pouch, dumped a small amount into a paw and tossed it into the fire. Joe's eyes instinctively followed it drawing her attention into the flames.  
  
“I prayed to the spirits seeking an answer but I have yet to find guidance.”  
  
“Does she live around here, maybe my family could help. If we go now...”  
  
“No,” he said softly “The night is upon us, travel now would be unwise, even for one such as myself. You may bed here by the fire where its warm.”  
  
Joe lurched inside at the thought of having to stay here with her hormones raging out of control but even she knew the dangers that wandering around the woods at night could bring, “But then,” she told herself looking over at the naked wolf who was staring back at her. “It could be far more dangerous if I stay.”  
  
Another gentle breeze wafted up from behind her kicking up some fallen leaves making her jump. If he didn't kill her, her anxiety would. Joe rearranged herself from an uncomfortable lump, knelt next to the fires pit then changed the subject. “So... tell me about her... your love.”  
  
Storm pulled forth another paw-full of powder and paused in thought. “I... I remember that she was very beautiful. But... she left me... I do not understand why.” He tossed the powder onto the fire, closed his eyes and continued his prayer.  
  
“Well, I've always found that the best way to find something is to start where you last saw her. Where did you... last see her?” Joe coughed as smoke filled the air that bellowed from the powder but his voice seem to fade away as Joe's attention centered itself on the dwindling dancing flames. Then suddenly the fire burst and exploded and Joe startled and fell forward into the burning flames. But it was not the red hot heat she felt but the cool embrace of the wolf, his words returning through her mind. “Please, do not be afraid. You seem familiar some how. Like I’ve known you before. From a dream.”  
  
Joe's mind swirled. The natural order of things. One of predator, the other of prey. Hunter and hunted, You are the hunted. He the hunter. Male, of blood and breathe. Female the cycles of life and passion. Those eyes were drinking her in, body and soul, and she felt almost as though she were weightless, falling, though where she would land was beyond her ability to know.  
  
As he spoke his mind flashed back to a night not that long ago to him. A night very much like this one. It quickly played out in his head as he saw himself running through the trees under another golden moon. Only this night, he was on the hunt.


End file.
